THE CHARADE OF FULLERTON POLICE DEPARTMENT REFORM UNDER FORMER POLICE CHIEF DAN HUGHES AND THE SILENCE OF OUR FULLERTON CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS…MAYOR BRUCE WHITAKER, MAYOR PRO-TEM DOUG CHAFFEE AND COUNCIL MEMBERS JENNIFER FITZGERALD, GREG SEBOURN AND JESUS SILVA. BY BARRY LEVINSON
Barry Levinson
Our streets are the joke of Southern California, we are drowning in millions of dollars in red ink caused by overly generous salary and pension increases, our traffic congestion is quickly reaching big city proportions and our elected representatives are the poster children for corruption and crony capitalism, yet the biggest problem still remains the corruption throughout the ranks of our Fullerton Police Department. They have the power to use lethal force against the public and the ability to put innocent people in jail. I have first hand experience with the latter statement. This can definitely impact adversely every citizen in Fullerton. It does not matter if you are an activist or you are someone who does not know the names of any of our elected officials. We are all at risk and will continue to be at risk until we clean house at the FPD!
So with this as the backdrop, I spoke at the Fullerton City Council during Public Comments on April 18, 2017. They give you a “generous” 3 whole minutes to speak. In reality, with the current group of council members, it would not matter if they gave you three hours or even three days to speak because they ignore everything out of the public’s mouths unless you choose to kiss their you now what!
I spoke about two very important subjects. The first subject was the failure of our “reformed” Fullerton Police Department to take the statements from Joe Imbriano and myself to report the crime of obstruction of justice by recently retired Police Chief, Dan Hughes in regard to his failure to allow his officers to follow normal police procedure to arrest Joe Felz for DUI and for leaving the scene of an accident with damages. Joe Felz was eventually charged with those two counts, months after the incident by the OCDA Office. I admonished the entire council for its continued failure to discuss this very important issue.
With my remaining 30 seconds I dropped a bombshell in the laps of our distinguished dais. I told them that I was informed by Banc of California employees at the Euclid and Rosecrans Avenue branch that it is closing because a developer bought the property to be part of the development of the entire Sunrise Village Shopping Center to become mixed-use high-density high-rise residential units. The city desperately needs the short-term infusion of money that would be generated by the Park and Recreation Department Park Dwelling fees of $11,700 per residential unit. If they build 500 units for example that would generate an additional $5,850,000 in revenue. This would help to cover the extremely generous salary and benefit employee raises approved by the council last year. More development approvals would be needed to continue paying for these salary and benefit increases approved under Mayor Jennifer Fitzgerald in 2016 for subsequent years. I put the council on notice that I smelled a rat. Namely that the city in my opinion has been dealing with developers to make this mixed use project a reality in the near future. Why else would these landlords create vacant properties with the absence of valuable rents if they only had a hope that they could convert the shopping center to a concrete jungle of mixed use high-density housing units. I told them it was not zoned for that use and that the people of that neighborhood would fight to make sure it never ever came to fruition. You should have seen the faces of Bruce Whitaker and Jennifer Fitzgerald after I finished with my comments. They did not look pleased at all.
Of course, there was no response by any council members to these comments and the Interim Police Chief also was silent after he learned that his department would not take a simple police report by two members of the community. Gee silly me, I thought it was their job to take the statement and then go and investigate; not determine that no crime was committed so therefore no police report was necessary to be taken by them in the first place.
The first order of business has to be from the OCDA Office by filing obstruction of justice charges against Dan Hughes.
Like I said at the beginning of this post, the City of Fullerton and the Fullerton Police Department are corrupt and the Fullerton Police Department needs to clean house
#1 by Old School on June 9, 2017 - 6:37 am
In the Hughes letter regarding Felz hit and run, DUI. Hughes writes that he calls Sgt. Corbett directly. There is something called the chain of command. After hours at a police department the Watch Commander is the acting “Chief of Police”. Why would the Chief of police violate the chain of command and call a field Sgt. directly? Does Hughes have no confidence in the decision-making ability of his Watch Commander Andrew Goodrich? This never happens and in itself is very suspect but we all know why it occurred. Is it possible that Sgt. Corbett called his buddy Hughes, “ The chief of the Untouchables” to directly to start the cover-up ball rolling?
Several days after this incident Division Commander Siko calls the four initial responding officers to his office, the officers are chastised for comments they made regarding the obvious state of extreme intoxication displayed by Felz and recorded on their Axon body cameras. The Captain was dismayed that the officers did not have the common sense to know when to turn off their cameras when dealing with a highly political situation. (An officer turning off a body camera in the middle of a call is a very serious policy violation and when politics are involved, just plain stupid). The Captain Siko told the officers that they had just ruined the life of a good man.
One other overlooked fact that may have factored into the nights decision making of the Felz incident by the Mayor, Chief of Police and Watch Commander was on-going police management salary negotiations. At the time of the incident Lt. Andrew Goodrich was representing the Fullerton police management bargaining group and was in the process of working out a new agreement with Felz and the HR manager. One wonders if the thought of leverage in a late night “get out of Jail free pass” played a role?
Hughes has a history of attempting to trump-up charges on his foes and people he hates. This goes all the back to his patrol days. Hughes has a broad interpretation and selective misunderstanding of the elements of a crime when it suits his needs which when needed he uses as a weapon against others, as in the case of Mr. Barry Levinson. In most if these past cases the charges were baseless and were shot down once they were review by the DA’s office as in the case of Mr. Levinson and Corporal Irish.
In the case of Corporal Paul Irish the department had suspended Irish for changing his mind about conducting briefing training on “seat belt policy” and instead spoke about “Ethics”. The changing of training topics by a presenter happens all the time in a police briefing and is not a violation of policy.
Most of the persons present at the Irish briefing were interviewed by PSB and married to their story…a couple supervisors present who knew of Irish’s past history for reporting Hughes and Hughes’ “Untouchables” for ethics violations had embellished their accounts of the Irish Briefing training. Why would those officers embellish and lie about what Irish said in briefing, to gain or maintain favor with Hughes to preserve the status quo?
Irish was never asked by PSB about a recording but when asked later by the lawyer representing the city if he had recorded his training, Irish told the lawyer that he in fact had a copy of the recording. Fearing that the recording would be used to impeach the conflicting statements of some “Untouchable” witnesses Hughes and the city’s lawyer fought to have it thrown out. Hughes argued that by Corporal Irish, recording himself in a police briefing room in a city building attending by 25 people (most of which are uniformed cops with cameras strapped to their chest) is “confidential communication” as defined by California penal code section 632 PC.
Hughes amended the administrative charges against Irish and now charged him with the crime of 632 PC. A criminal investigation was now conducted against Corporal Irish. Months later the DA reviewed the charges and determined that Irish committed no crime. Later during arbitration, Irish’s lawyer, Mr. Michael Williamson was able to prove that in fact not only no law was violated by Irish recording himself no departmental policy was violated either.
One piece of evidence introduced in the Irish arbitration that shed some light on the Fullerton Culture of Corruption was a copy of a poster that was hanging in the locker of Fullerton Police PIO Sgt. Jon Radus. It is a photo-shop likeness of a movie poster from the movie the “Untouchables”. It depicts the face of Dan Hughes overlooking a gun toting gang of thirty’s era cops with the faces of Sgt. Corbett, Sgt. Radus, Sgt. Garah and Sgt. Petropulos superimposed on the bodies. All of these police supervisors played a dubious role in the termination of Corporal Paul Irish.
The arbitrator allowed the photograph of the poster to be introduced to support the theory that this “Untouchables clique” may have played a role in the treatment of Corporal Irish.
After one listens to the briefing training given by Corporal Paul Irish on September 6th 2014 those present and the listener does not hear a bitter employee using the platform of briefing training as his personal soap box to deliver a self-serving diatribe. One hears a honest, proud seasoned cop fed-up with the corruption at his department and sick of working with crooked cops and the supervisors who support and defend them.
Corporal Paul Irish wants his job back. He wants to serve the community of Fullerton again. He thinks he can because Hughes and Felz are now gone. I fear that when the City Council hears the recording and knows the whole story behind the termination of Corporal Irish, fearful of more city embarrassment, they will offer him a settlement he can’t refuse just to go away.